Side by Side: Scott education plans past and present

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

In the eight years that Gov. Phil Scott has been in office, his administration has produced two reports on reforming education in Vermont. These reports that are strikingly similar in conclusions, but very different in their origins. One was said to be the result of public input at the grass roots level while the other eschewed participation by anyone but political appointees. How could such different groups come up with such similar results?

Plan One: Two versions of Designing Our Future

Plan One — Designing Our Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Vermont’s Education System — started out as a 10-page  document that, according to then-Education Secretary Dan French, was “leaked to the press.” The date on the cover was Jan. 1, 2019.

Also on the cover were the names of five agencies — Education, Administration, Commerce and Community Development, Digital Services and  Human Services  — and the Department of Labor, all signaling that this was an administration effort. In fact, inside the plan, the participation of “staff from the Governor’s office” was spelled out.

Within a few days of Designing Our Future becoming public, the AOE released a second version that had increased in size to 32 pages but had dropped the names of state agencies from the cover page.  At that time, The Telegraph asked a number of questions about the intent of the Blueprint. Then AOE spokesman Ted Fisher said that the document was a “strategic exercise” and not a “policy proposal.”

The Telegraph also asked for the minutes of the meetings of the “design team,” but Fisher replied that, “The design work took place within the agency’s Administrative Team. There are no minutes of these meetings.”

The word “design” represents a specific “strategy” for coming up with the plan as explained in its early pages. It differs from a “representative strategy” that includes stakeholders in the process to “ensure buy-in during implementation.” The design strategy involves a team that may not be representative but can work quickly to design a prototype: In this case, a prototype of the state’s education system. Then that plan “can then be shared broadly among various stakeholder groups for feedback and reaction.”

French spoke of a third version and a blog to come at a March 2019 State Board of Education meeting, but the whole thing seemed to disappear after that. A search for version three returns nothing on the AOE website.

Plan Two: Stronger Schools, Stronger Students

Dan French resigned in March 2023 and the administration did not name a new secretary for 12 months. By then, the education system was in a crisis as school budgets across the state went down to defeat.  Zoie Saunders came on board as Interim Secretary of Education in April 2024 with a 100-day plan that included a “Listen and Learn tour” that was set up to gather opinions on the ground to inform changes in the system.

After the Listen and Learn tour, the AOE worked on the governor’s plan for transforming the education system and – remarkably – came up with much the same plan as it had under French.  Stronger Schools, Stronger Students: Governor Scott’s Plan to Support Vibrant Communities has been released in dribbles since early January of this year, and at a time when many taxpayers are upset at the state’s education property tax, how many of them will want to jump to plans that put the state totally in the drivers seat?

The intersection of two plans

Below is a comparison of some of the features of each of Scott’s two plans. Following that is a list of a few of the other ideas in the 2018-2019 Designing Our Future that may speak to some of the features of Gov. Scott’s plan that have yet to be made public.

School Funding

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: A new “foundation formula” funding system with similarities to the one that was struck down by the Vermont Supreme Court in the Brigham case. Brigham found that the ability of larger, richer districts to provide more funding for their students than poorer, more rural ones violated the Vermont constitution’s guarantee of education equity. The proposed foundation formula includes the ability of some jurisdictions to raise additional funds above the base amount.
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE: Re-evaluate school funding.

Number of Districts

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: A reduction from 119 districts to five. These follow the grouped outlines of existing regional supervisory unions organizations.
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE:  One statewide school district (GSSD – greatly simplified school district).

School Choice

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: Districts would have a lottery for students to opt out and attend private schools with public funds.
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE:  State-wide school choice among all public schools, tech centers and approved independent schools.

State Governance

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: Move functions such as rule and policy making from the State Board of Education to the AOE.
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE: Abolish the State Board of Education or rename it with diminished authority. Education would then be directed by the Secretary of Education, with the Legislature and governor taking on the role of the Board of Education in establishing education policy.

Local Governance

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: Each of the five districts would have an elected “part time” school board.
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE:  Four elected regional school boards with a superintendent in each with the authority to close schools.  These “would be regional entities, not school districts” The superintendents prepare a budget for the secretary to approve.

School Governance

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: Each school would have an “advisory council” made up of “caregivers,” educators/staff and students. The councils will be “responsible for the School Continuous Improvement Plan” and will have input into “budget development and the District Strategic Plan.”
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE:  Each school has a principal to operate the school and develop improvement plans; Each school would  be required to have a Parent School Committee to advise principals.

The Future of School Buildings

• STRONGER SCHOOLS: Regional comprehensive high schools, “central” middle schools and local elementaries. Also, there would be “collaborative planning and investment to leverage school buildings as community assets if they are closed.”
• DESIGNING OUR FUTURE: K-4 grades in each town as practicable, 5-8 grades would be regional, 9-12 would be “flexible.” Existing school property would be transferred to the state.

What remains in 2018 plan that could surface in Stronger Schools

In addition to the ideas listed in the chart above, the 2018-19 Designing Our Future plan also contained a number of measures in areas that have not yet been spelled out in the administration’s most recent plan. In the earlier plan they include:

• Teachers become state employees with a statewide contract;
• State-wide curriculum would be established by the AOE;
• An open transportation “conversation” – with the state determining the level of transportation necessary.
• Redrawing of regional social services and economic development plans to be consistent with and integrated into each education region;
• Data systems, human resources and accounting to be centralized at the state level;
• “Decommission” the word “board” and use council instead to show the shift in responsibility/authority;
• A curriculum established for the needs of economic development to provide a consistent stream of employees to business.

The state Legislature will have to pass many of the changes proposed by Gov. Scott, but with the sense of political danger that dramatic tax increases and Republican electoral gains have engendered, some majority legislators may be giving the plan a long look. By the same token, how many Republicans – new or veteran – want to go home and explain handing almost all local control over to a state agency?